I began to laugh already-" he will have
'Out of the hole you hide in, on to the front,
Count Guido Franceschini, show yourself!
Hear what a man thinks of a thing like you,
And after, take this foulness in your face!'"

The words lay living on my lip, I made

The one turn more - and there at the window stood,

Framed in its black square length, with lamp in hand,

Pompilia; the same great, grave, griefful air
As stands i' the dusk, on altar that I know,
Left alone with one moonbeam in her cell,
Our Lady of all the Sorrows. Ere I knelt -
Assured myself that she was flesh and blood
She had looked one look and vanished.
I thought "Just so:
It was herself, they have set her there to
watch

Stationed to see some wedding-band go by,
On fair pretence that she must bless the bride,
Or wait some funeral with friends wind past,
And crave peace for the corpse that claims its
due.

She never dreams they used her for a snare,
And now withdraw the bait has served its turn.
Well done, the husband, who shall fare the
worse!"

And on my lip again was "Out with thee,
Guido!" When all at once she reappeared;
But, this time, on the terrace overhead,
So close above me, she could almost touch
My head if she bent down; and she did bend,
While I stood still as stone, all eye, all ear.

She began-"You have sent me letters, Sir:
I have read none, I can neither read nor write;
But she you gave them to, a woman here,
One of the people in whose power I am,
Partly explained their sense, I think, to me
Obliged to listen while she inculcates

That you, a priest, can dare love me, a wife,
Desire to live or die as I shall bid,
(She makes me listen if I will or no)
Because you saw my face a single time.
It cannot be she says the thing you mean;

Such wickedness were deadly to us both:

But good true love would help me now so much

I tell myself, you may mean good and true.
You offer me, I seem to understand,
Because I am in poverty and starve,

Much money, where one piece would save my

life.

The silver cup upon the altar-cloth

Is neither yours to give nor mine to take;
But I might take one bit of bread therefrom,
Since I am starving, and return the rest,
Yet do no harm: this is my very case.
I am in that strait, I may not dare abstain
From so much of assistance as would bring
The guilt of theft on neither you nor me;
But no superfluous particle of aid.

I think, if you will let me state my case,
Even had you been so fancy-fevered here,
Not your sound self, you must grow healthy

now

Care only to bestow what I can take.
That it is only you in the wide world,
Knowing me nor in thought nor word nor deed,
Who, all unprompted save by your own heart,
Come proffering assistance now, were strange
But that my whole life is so strange: as strange
It is, my husband whom I have not wronged
Should hate and harm me. For his own soul's
sake,

Hinder the harm! But there is something

more,

And that the strangest: it has got to be
Somehow for my sake too, and yet not mine,

This is a riddle-for some kind of sake
Not any clearer to myself than you,
And yet as certain as that I draw breath, -
I would fain live, not die- oh no, not die!
My case is, I was dwelling happily

At Rome with those dear Comparini, called
Father and mother to me; when at once
I found I had become Count Guido's wife:
Who then, not waiting for a moment, changed
Into a fury of fire, if once he was
Merely a man: his face threw fire at mine,
He laid a hand on me that burned all peace,
All joy, all hope, and last all fear away,
Dipping the bough of life, so pleasant once,
In fire which shrivelled leaf and bud alike,
Burning not only present life but past,
Which you might think was safe beyond his
reach.

He reached it, though, since that beloved pair,
My father once, my mother all those years,
That loved me so, now say I dreamed a dream
And bid me wake, henceforth no child of theirs,
Never in all the time their child at all.
Do you understand? I cannot yet so it is.
Just so I say of you that proffer help:
I cannot understand what prompts your soul,
I simply needs must see that it is so,

Only one strange and wonderful thing more.
They came here with me, those two dear ones,

kept

All the old love up, till my husband, till
His people here so tortured them, they fled.
And now, is it because I grow in flesh
And spirit one with him their torturer,
That they, renouncing him, must cast off me?
If I were graced by God to have a child,
Could I one day deny God graced me so?
Then, since my husband hates me, I shall break
No law that reigns in this fell house of hate,
By using letting have effect so much

Of hate as hides me from that whole of hate Would take my life which I want and must have

Just as I take from your excess of love
Enough to save my life with, all I need.
The Archbishop said to murder me were sin :
My leaving Guido were a kind of death
With no sin,
-more death, he must answer for.
Hear now what death to him and life to you
I wish to pay and owe. Take me to Rome!
You go to Rome, the servant makes me hear.
Take me as you would take a dog, I think,
Masterless left for strangers to maltreat:
Take me home like that leave me in the

house

-

The Archbishop and the Governor : they smiled. 'Stop your mouth, fair one!'- presently they frowned,

Get you gone, disengage you from our feet!' I went in my despair to an old priest,

Only a friar, no great man like these two,
But good, the Augustinian, people name

Romano, he confessed me two months since: He fears God, why then needs he fear the world?

And when he questioned how it came about
That I was found in danger of a sin -

Despair of any help from providence,

'Since, though your husband outrage you,' said he,

'That is a case too common, the wives die
Or live, but do not sin so deep as this
Then I told what I never will tell you-
How, worse than husband's hate, I had to bear
The love-soliciting to shame called love

Of his brother, the young idle priest i' the

house

With only the devil to meet there.

grave

This is

Yes, we must interfere: I counsel, — write
To those who used to be your parents once,
Of dangers here, bid them convey you hence !'
But,' said I, 'when I neither read nor write?'
Then he took pity and promised I will write.'
If he did so, why, they are dumb or dead:
Either they give no credit to the tale,

Or else, wrapped wholly up in their own joy
Of such escape, they care not who cries, still
I' the clutches. Anyhow, no word arrives.
All such extravagance and dreadfulness
Seems incident to dreaming, cured one way,
Wake me! The letter I received this morn,
Said if the woman spoke your very sense —
'You would die for me:' I can believe it now:
For now the dream gets to involve yourself.
First of all, you seemed wicked and not good,
In writing me those letters: you came in
Like a thief upon me. I this morning said
In my extremity, entreat the thief!
Try if he have in him no honest touch!
A thief might save me from a murderer.

"T was a thief said the last kind word to Christ:
Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft:
And so did I prepare what I now say.
But now, that you stand and I see your face,

Never mistook the signs. Enough of this-
Let the wraith go to nothingness again,
Here is the orb, have only thought for her!

"Thought?" nay, Sirs, what shall follow was not thought:

I have thought sometimes, and thought long and hard.

I have stood before, gone round a serious thing, Tasked my whole mind to touch and clasp it close,

As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar.
God and man, and what duty I owe both,

I dare to say I have confronted these

In thought but no such faculty helped here.
I put forth no thought, -powerless, all that
night

I paced the city: it was the first Spring.
By the invasion I lay passive to,

In rushed new things, the old were rapt away;
Alike abolished the imprisonment

Of the outside air, the inside weight o' the world

That pulled me down. Death meant, to spurn the ground,

Soar to the sky,- die well and you do that.
The very immolation made the bliss;

Death was the heart of life, and all the harm My folly had crouched to avoid, now proved a veil

Hiding all gain my wisdom strove to grasp:
As if the intense centre of the flame
Should turn a heaven to that devoted fly
Which hitherto, sophist alike and sage,
Saint Thomas with his sober gray goose-quill,
And sinner Plato by Cephisian reed,
Would fain, pretending just the insect's good,
Whisk off, drive back, consign to shade again.
Into another state, under new rule

I knew myself was passing swift and sure;
Whereof the initiatory pang approached,
Felicitous annoy, as bitter-sweet

As when the virgin-band, the victors chaste,
Feel at the end the earthly garments drop,
And rise with something of a rosy shame
Into immortal nakedness: so I

Lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill
Into the ecstasy and outthrob pain.

I' the gray of dawn it was I found myself
Facing the pillared front o' the Pieve - mine,
My church it seemed to say for the first time,
"But am not I the Bride, the mystic love
O' the Lamb, who took thy plighted troth, my
priest,

To fold thy warm heart on my heart of stone
And freeze thee nor unfasten any more?
This is a fleshly woman, let the free
Bestow their life - blood, thou art pulseless

now!"

-

See Day by day I had risen and left this church

At the signal waved me by some foolish fan,
With half a curse and half a pitying smile
For the monk I stumbled over in my haste,
Prostrate and corpse-like at the altar-foot
Intent on his corona: then the church

Was ready with her quip, if word conduced,

Now, when I found out first that life and death

Are means to an end, that passion uses both
Indisputably mistress of the man

Whose form of worship is self-sacrifice :

Now, from the stone lungs sighed the scrannel
voice,
"Leave that live passion, come be dead with
me!"

As if, i' the fabled garden, I had gone
On great adventure, plucked in ignorance
Hedge-fruit, and feasted to satiety,
Laughing at such high fame for hips and haws,
And scorned the achievement: then come all at

once

O'the prize o' the place, the thing of perfect gold,

The apple's self: and, scarce my eye on that, Was 'ware as well o' the seven-fold dragon's watch.

Sirs, I obeyed. Obedience was too strange,
This new thing that had been struck into me
By the look o' the lady, to dare disobey
The first authoritative word. 'T was God's.
I had been lifted to the level of her,
Could take such sounds into my sense. I said,
"We two are cognizant o' the Master now;
She it is bids me bow the head: how true,
I am a priest! I see the function here;

I thought the other way self-sacrifice:
This is the true, seals up the perfect sum.

I

pay it, sit down, silently obey."

So, I went home. Dawn broke, noon broadened,
I-

I sat stone-still, let time run over me.
The sun slanted into my room, had reached
The west. I opened book, - Aquinas blazed
With one black name only on the white page.
I looked up, saw the sunset: vespers rang:
"She counts the minutes till I keep my word
And come say all is ready. I am a priest.
Duty to God is duty to her: I think
God, who created her, will save her too
Some new way, by one miracle the more,
Without me. Then, prayer may avail perhaps."
I went to my own place i' the Pieve, read
The office: I was back at home again
Sitting i' the dark. Could she but know-

but know

66

That, were there good in this distinct from
God's,

Really good as it reached her, though procured
By a sin of mine, I should sin: God forgives.
She knows it is no fear withholds me: fear?
Of what? Suspense here is the terrible thing.
If she should, as she counts the minutes, come
On the fantastic notion that I fear

How do we discontinue to be friends?
I will go minister, advise her seek
Help at the source, above all, not despair:
There may be other happier help at hand.
I hope it, wherefore then neglect to say?"

There she stood - leaned there, for the second time,

Over the terrace, looked at me, then spoke : 'Why is it you have suffered me to stay Breaking my heart two days more than was need?

Why delay help, your own heart yearns to give ?

You are again here, in the selfsame mind,
I see here, steadfast in the face of you,
You grudge to do no one thing that I ask.
Why then is nothing done? You know my
need.

Still, through God's pity on me, there is time
And one day more: shall I be saved or no?"
I answered-"Lady, waste no thought, no

word

Even to forgive me! Care for what I careOnly! Now follow me as I were fate!

Leave this house in the dark to-morrow night, Just before daybreak:- there 's new moon

this eve

It sets, and then begins the solid black.
Descend, proceed to the Torrione, step
Over the low dilapidated wall,

Take San Clemente, there's no other gate
Unguarded at the hour: some paces thence
An inn stands; cross to it; I shall be there."

She answered, "If I can but find the way.
But I shall find it. Go now!"

I did go,
Took rapidly the route myself prescribed,
Stopped at Torrione, climbed the ruined place,
Proved that the gate was practicable, reached
The inn, no eye, despite the dark, could miss,
Knocked there and entered, made the host se-

cure:

"With Caponsacchi it is ask and have;

I know my betters. Are you bound for Rome? I get swift horse and trusty man," said he.

Then I retraced my steps, was found once more In my own house for the last time: there lay The broad pale opened "Summa." "Shut his book,

There's other showing! 'Twas a Thomas too Obtained -more favored than his namesake here

A gift, tied faith fast, foiled the tug of doubt,
Our Lady's girdle; down he saw it drop
As she ascended into heaven, they say:
He kept that safe and bade all doubt adieu.
I too have seen a lady and hold a grace."

I know not how the night passed: morning
broke,
Presently came my servant.
Do you forget?" I started.
What is it you know?"
sion, Sir,

"Sir, this eve "How forget? With due submis

This being last Monday in the month but one,
And a vigil, since to-morrow is Saint George,
And feast-day, and moreover day for copes,
And Canon Conti now away a month,
And Canon Crispi sour because, forsooth,
You let him sulk in stall and bear the brunt
Of the octave . . . Well, Sir, 't is important!"
**True!
Hearken, I have to start for Rome this night.
No word, lest Crispi overboil and burst!
Provide me with a laic dress! Throw dust
I' the Canon's eye, stop his tongue's scandal so!
See there's a sword in case of accident."
I knew the knave, the knave knew me.